Black-blood imaging is a technique developed to improve the visualization of blood vessels and the heart in magnetic resonance images so as to more clearly reveal pathologic tissues and morphologic abnormalities, which appear close to the blood-wall interface. (See Edelman R. R., Chien D., and Kim D., “Fast Selective Black Blood MR Imaging,” Radiology 1991; 181:655-660.) These improvements in visualization include the elimination of image artifacts arising from flowing blood and a reduction in the residual blood signal, which may mask pathologic conditions such as atherosclerotic plaque or thrombus formation. The combination of black-blood imaging with contrast enhancement (CE) offers a high potential for various cardiovascular applications, and in particular, for improved high-resolution MRI of atherosclerotic plaque. (See Yuan C. et al., “Contrast-Enhanced High Resolution MRI for Atherosclerotic Carotid Artery Tissue Characterization,” Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, 2002; 15:62-67.) The ability to provide high resolution images of plaque in the carotid arteries and other vessels is becoming increasingly important in assessing the potential vulnerability and risk of patients to stroke and other cardiovascular diseases. However, due to the significant shortening of T1 in blood and the variability of T1 caused by the use of a contrast enhancement (CE) agent, a traditional method for achieving black-blood imaging, such as double inversion-recovery (DIR) cannot guarantee effective blood suppression on post-contrast images. This issue is especially important for quantitative image analysis, such as the calculation of contrast enhancement and morphological measurements. The crucial problem of DIR is that it is necessary to know the relaxation time, T1, of blood in order to calculate the inversion time (TI). The DIR method can effectively suppress the blood signal if and only if TI is determined so as to allow the magnetization of blood to approach zero. However, the use of CE agent decreases the T1 parameter of blood by an unpredictable amount. Uncertainties in the effect of CE on T1 arise from various factors related to the injection technique, flow dynamics, concentration, and time between injection and imaging. Determining the proper TI is therefore uncertain. Accordingly, it would be critical to employ an MRI technique that provides the benefits of DIR in achieving black-blood images, but is much less sensitive to variations in the T1 parameter of blood due to application of a CE agent.